After years of being debated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), .XXX was approved earlier this year and is now a reality. Approximately 100,000 XXX domains are going live on Tuesday.

The new top level domains (TLD) are not without controversy. Some free speech advocates worry that there will be governments that require the use of XXX for adult content, effectively forcing such sites into a virtual red-light district but others, including some religious groups, worry that it will legitimize or even sanction pornography.

Stuart Lawley, the founder and CEO of ICM Registry, the company behind XXX, argues that the designation will help parents keep their children away from adult content.

"Every single .XXX site has the clear visual identifier of .XXX so nobody's going to type in that name by mistake," he said in an interview (scroll down to listen to podcast). Lawley added that his company has "helped sponsor and bring to market the MetaCert W3C cloud-based labeling system" that he said has "now labeled 250 million Web pages across all top level domains about all content. So the same electronic tags that are 100 percent present on all XXX sites are also being populated for the first time across adult content across all TLDs." MetaCert, he said, is in the process of labeling sites for content, but there are no assurances that it will label all adult content other than .XXX sites

Parents beware
Despite the relative early success of ICM Registry and the efforts of MetaCert, it's important for parents to remember that XXX is not mandatory so there is nothing to stop adult content operators from continuing to use .COM or other top level domains.

To find out more about XXX, I spoke with Lawley via Skype. Click below to listen.

Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry
ICM Registry

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About the author

Larry Magid is a technology journalist and an Internet safety advocate. He's been writing and speaking about Internet safety since he wrote Internet safety guide "Child Safety on the Information Highway" in 1994. He is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, founder of SafeKids.com and SafeTeens.com, and a board member of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Larry's technology analysis and commentary can be heard on CBS News and CBS affiliates, and read on CBSNews.com. He also writes a personal-tech column for the San Jose Mercury News. You can e-mail Larry.
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